


Play It, Sam

by MoragMacPherson



Category: Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Challenge Response, Comment Fic, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoragMacPherson/pseuds/MoragMacPherson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to a prompt from twisted_yarns: "Sam Carter is a little old for Sam Winchester, but he's really good looking and extremely intelligent. She'd love to take him back to her place."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play It, Sam

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post "Swan Song" for Supernatural, and post "Stargate: Resistance" for the Stargate Universe.

The bar is a few turns off of Interstate 25, a little north of Monument, far enough from Cheyenne Mountain that there's no risk of running into anyone from the SGC. She goes there when she needs a little alone time: missions that have gone bad, budget meetings gone long, or any time she needs to feel like a normal person again. No one at The Foothills Tavern and Inn has ever met Brigadier General Samantha Carter or even knows she's in the Air Force. No one here teases her about how she can blow up a sun or calls her a national resource. At the Foothills the regulars know Sam, the lady who drinks manhattans made with well rye, learned to play pool at these tables, and will listen to you talk about whatever you've got to say like it's the most fascinating thing she's ever heard, even if it's just what you had for breakfast this morning.

She never tries to make the drive home: rents the room at the end of the hall on the second floor and is always gone by seven am the next morning. If sometimes she needs a little help making it up to her room, the staff doesn't mind: Sam pays in cash and tips like a Texas oil tycoon. She's been coming here for almost a decade now - always irregular intervals but more often the last year or so - and they've gotten to know her habits.

When she walks in tonight, the bartender smiles broadly: this isn't going to be one of the visits when Sam has to be cut off. Just the annual budget meeting, this time, which is its own kind of hell, but at least not the kind of hell where she had to write a letter to someone's spouse or parents. Tonight she'd shoot some pool, drink her rye, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and drive home without a hangover for once.

Sam hands her coat and overnight bag to Charlie behind the bar and receives a drink in return. Evelyn at the register tells her that Mr. Dowd, the bar's mascot alcoholic, is down in county lock up for the next month but he sends his regards. This isn't unusual, more of a 'state of the regulars' type briefing. Sam does enjoy looking at pictures of Evelyn's daughter Lauren, who's starting her freshman year down in Durango. First member of her family to go to college, and Sam knows the girl who used to run around and beg for quarters to play to one of the shabby arcade games that lurked in one corner, watched her grow up. Lauren's going to do fine at school, and Sam tells her mother as much, tells her not to worry.

Then Sam turns around and looks over at the pool tables at the other end of the bar. She recognizes Guillermo, a regular who hasn't had much luck holding a job since he got back from driving trucks in Iraq, but not his opponent, who significantly improves the scenery. Sam plucks the cherry out of her drink and eats it while watching tall, dark, and handsome move around the table, making a big show of checking out the angles. Guillermo is leaning against the wall, spinning his cue in his left hand, scowling. The kid picks out a bad shot and makes it; it could have been dumb luck. When he does it again on the next shot Sam straightens up. Now she can see the pile of cash sitting on the back counter. Sam pulls out her wallet, drops a couple of bills on the bar to start up her tab, and saunters over to stand next to Guillermo. "Hey there, Sam," he says with a strained smile that quickly disappears.

Sam notices the stranger looks up at the greeting and also that the waist of his pants sags a bit in the back. "Am I too late to grab a game with you, Guilo?" she asks as Guillermo's opponent lines up his next shot. Now that she's looking for it she realizes that, for all of his amateurish posturing, the guy doesn't waste any motion as he lines up.

"Was having a pretty good night, but looks like my luck might have turned," says Guillermo, taking a sip of his beer, but Sam's eyes are on his opponent.

New guy adjusts his angle by a hair at the last second and the cue goes wide and misses the last stripe by an inch. He slaps his cue on the side of the table and mutters, "Shit," then looks up, his face pinched. "It's all yours," he says, stepping back from the table and taking an exagerrated drink from his beer.

Guillermo contains his sigh of relief and sets down his beer. Before he looks away, Sam extends her right thumb and index finger and taps them on her hip. Guilo's got a quick temper but the stranger's carrying a weapon, probably a large caliber pistol. Guillermo's eyes widen and Sam takes another sip of her drink and pats her fingertips to her chest, twice. Guillermo nods and heads to the table where he knocks the remaining balls down without hesitation. Guilo's not a bad player, but definitely not at this hustler's level.

While Guilo cleans up, the stranger comes to stand by Sam. He smells of sweat and Old Spice overlaid with a strong scent of tequila; Sam's willing to bet that he didn't actually drink much of it. "Looks like that mistake's going to cost me," he says, a lopsided smile on his face and Sam has to admit it's a damn good act. Most people would be fooled by the the slouch, the absurd hair cut and the baggy layers: all of it calculated to advertise harmlessness.

Most people don't know as many members of the Special Forces as Sam. You start to recognize the type. "Got a good crowd of players in here, most mistakes will cost you," she says.

"Not to mention the home field advantage." Sam tilts her head at him and he explains. "This is an old table. People think pool's straight-up geometry, and they're mostly right. Except when you're playing on an antique like this one. Decades of strikes find imperfections in the wood, tiny dimples add up. I think I've finally figured out the far left corner."

Sam arches her eyebrows. It's true that the banks in that corner are sometimes unpredicatable, but she's learned to play around them. "You're applying chaos theory to billiards?"

"It's an entirely practical application," he says with a wink.

"You're not wrong," she admits before offering him her hand. "I'm Sam."

The man's smile widens to reveal a set of dimples. "Hey, I'm Sam too."

"Nice to meet you, Sam Too," she replies with a smile. Sam hasn't been a blushing young thing for decades but this man reminds her of when she was. She's also not a small woman but she could have worn three-inch heels and still felt petite standing next to him. The hand that shakes hers doesn't hold so much as envelope it, and his calluses suggest that he fires both handguns and something larger, maybe a rifle or a shotgun, on a regular basis.

Sam Too's eyes flick down and slightly less down, looking her over. "You're not here with him, are you?"

Sam frowns. "Guilo? No, just a friend. He's a good kid."

"Kid?" he echoes with a laugh.

Sam sighs and rolls her eyes. She's probably going to have to bust this guy later anyway, but she was enjoying the flirting, which she doesn't get to do nearly often enough. "He's more than half my age, but it's a near thing."

She gets another glance before he raises his bottle back to his lips. "Age isn't all about math either," he says before drinking.

Sam can't decide how she wants to reply, so she doesn't, just watches him. He avoids prolonged eye-contact and doesn't pay nearly as much attention to the game as he does to his surroundings. And she's pretty sure he knows she's watching him. Sam takes another sip of her drink as Guillermo calls the eight ball and sinks it in the opposite corner. "Tough loss."

Sam Too is making a good show of it: running his hands through his hair and checking out his wallet. "You're telling me. Figured I'd get more than one go at three hundred," he says while thumbing through his remaining bills. Sam takes the chance to glare at Guillermo: he's got no business playing with those kinds of stakes, not if he wants to make rent. "Night's still young. One more game, man?"

Guilo laughs and counts his winnings. "I've already got enough of your money."

Sam Too steps up to Guilo. "C'mon man, give me a chance to cut my losses?" He reaches behind his back and Sam tenses but all he pulls out is a wad of cash. "You got lucky."

Guillermo tilts his head way back to look at him. "Three games isn't luck. It ain't your night." He looks over at Sam. "Tell you what? I've gotta take off but I trust Sam with my money. Try your luck against her." He hands half the cash to Sam who sticks it in her front pocket before heading to the wall and picking out a cue. By the time she turns around Guilo's made good on his escape and Sam Too is staring at her.

"I've been made, haven't I?"

"Yep," says Sam, starting to rack the balls.

"Where'd I mess up?"

"Couple of ways. That last miss was a dead-giveaway, though."

"You got a nickname like Black Widow or something like that?"

Sam chuckles. "Not when it comes to pool, no." She sets the triangle back in place. "Here's the deal, because I'd never try to con a con-man: you win, you get back what you started out with. You lose, you go, and either way: you consider this place off limits for hustling from now on."

Sam Too smiles and this one is honest and a little breath-taking. "I can live with that."

Sam walks up to him, gets close enough that she can feel his body heat and has to tilt her head all the way back to look at him. "There's one other thing," she says in a low voice.

Sam Too's breath catches. "What's that?"

And he's sufficiently distracted that Sam can grab the pistol out of his waistband before he has a chance to stop her. "You can ask for these back," she says, clearing the chamber and releasing the magazine into her left hand then pressing the Taurus back at him, "when you leave."

Sam steps back. Sam Too is visibly shaken, his eyes wide, and he murmurs something that sounds like "Christ," as he puts the gun back in his belt. "What are you," he asks, breathless.

Sam ignores the odd wording and grins, tucking the clip into her jacket pocket. "I'm the one who has the break." She leans over and takes her shot. Everything's going fine, five stripes neatly pocketed, until she has to get the fourteen past a line of solids and the shot banks a little wrong, just enough to miss the pocket and leave Sam Too a number of open shots.

By now Sam Too has recovered enough to smirk and say, "Told you to watch that corner," before lining up. He's a smug bastard; then again, now that he's really playing he has every right to be. It only takes him five shots to clear the solids and his eight-ball shot is so obvious that he doesn't bother to call it out loud, just points his cue. Sam nods and he pockets the ball."You're good," Sam says, handing him his money.

"You're not half bad," he replies, slipping the cash into his pocket. His eyes slide over to the table. "You never said: do I still have to leave?"

Sam blinks. "No, you don't."

"Good. I kind of like it here. Play again? Small stakes only: five bucks a game," he adds quickly to stall her protest.

This is a bad idea. Every piece of evidence she has says Sam Too is a clever, dangerous man. She really ought to send him on his way, pick up one of his empties on the way out and run his prints through AFIS. Beyond that, he's really too young for her. "That would be good," she says.

He flashes that million-watt grin and those dimples at her again. "Awesome. I'll go get us another round while you rack."

Sam winds up owing him ten dollars after eight quick games, all of them blurring together into a long conversation that isn't about anything but somehow says everything. Sam Too isn't just clever: he's smart and well-read even if he has pretty macabre tastes and a couple of weird ideas about urban legends. But he can follow her when she starts talking about physics and fundamental forces of the universe with minimal stops to define obscure terms. They don't talk about their past, their careers, or their families: they don't even exchange last names. She remains conscious that Sam Too is dangerous, but after a couple of hours Sam no longer feels endangered.

Evelyn rings the bell for last call and breaks the spell. Evelyn's giving Sam a knowing look and Sam blushes and looks down. There's a word people use for women who spend all night talking and drinking with men younger than their high school diplomas, and it's not nice.

Sam Too notices, lays his fingers over her wrist. "Mind if I change up the stakes for the last game?"

The point of contact is distracting. "Ah, what did you have in mind?"

"I lose, I leave and go find myself a place to sleep. I win: we spend the rest of the night proving age is just a number."

Sam blinks. He's being bold, unmistakable, and almost inhumanly tempting. She doesn't reply straight away but instead of being discouraged Sam Too runs his thumb along the inside of her wrist and that's just cheating. "Yeah, sure," she breathes out.

Sam Too nods and goes to rack the balls. She watches him stalk around the table and wonders idly if this makes him some kind of a cougar-hunter. Her mind sets on the word 'hunter,' and decides that it fits better than any other description she's used so far. It's her break and she keeps up her game, she has that much pride, doesn't even let him get a turn. Sam Too's cocky smirk disappears by the time she calls "Eight ball, side pocket." That said, she adds a little force to the shot, pockets the eight ball as called and sends the cue down right behind it. "Oops. Scratched on the eight ball," she says.

"I believe that means I win," he replies, smirk returning.

Sam replaces their cues at the rack. "You're not wrong."

He follows her upstairs. For several hours she doesn't feel very old at all. Until she wakes up at ten in the morning, alone. Sam stretches out and she doesn't just feel old, she feels sore, though not in a totally unpleasant way. She reaches over to the nightstand to find her phone so that she can call in to base, let them know she's taking the day off - being the base commander comes with some privileges - when she finds a note under the clip she'd confiscated last night.

 _Sam,_

I hope you enjoyed last night as much as I did. Sorry about letting you wake up to a note, but duty calls and it looks like you need the sleep. I guess I'll have to wait until next time to ask for my bullets back.

Sam


End file.
